Oh, Don’t Mind Mari
…she’s just having a mild myocardial infarction1 over here. Dreamhost, Mari’s webhosting company, billed Mari’s credit card for an entire year (twice, for no reason) this morning!
This is ranty, and pretty long. Don’t read unless you want to join in the nagging.
Inbox Surprise
Mari received an email saying:
This is just a notice that your Dreamhost Account #0000003
(”Deanna’s Account”) has a balance of $242.80 (including any charges not
due until 2009-01-02), with $242.80 due (since 2008-12-02).You also have $209.95 past due (owed since 2008-11-02), and if
by 2009-01-02 you do not pay at least the $209.95 part, your
account will be automatically suspended until payment is received.[...]
WHAT DO YOU OWE MONEY FOR?
We have the last payment on this account to be $16.41 on 2008-01-09 00:34:02.
Since then the following charges have been made to the account:2008-01-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-02-28.
2008-01-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-02-28.
2008-02-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-03-28.
2008-02-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-03-28.
2008-02-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-03-28.
2008-03-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-04-28.
2008-04-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-05-28.
2008-04-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-05-28.
2008-05-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-06-28.
2008-05-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-06-28.
2008-06-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-07-28.
2008-06-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-07-28.
2008-07-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-08-28.
2008-07-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-08-28.
2008-07-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-08-28.
2008-08-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-09-28.
2008-08-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-09-28.
2008-09-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-10-28.
2008-09-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-10-28.
2008-10-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-11-28.
2008-10-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-11-28.
2008-11-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-12-28.
2008-11-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-12-28.
2008-11-29 - $10.95 for “My Crazy Domain Insane” through 2008-12-28.
Mari must be seeing double…
Notice how everything is being billed twice? Mari isn’t sure3, but Mari thinks they may have already billed Mari twice for that $16.41 payment on the 9th. Mari will have to contact them about it if the double charges are still there after Mari receives that “all clear” email they talked about in the Billing Issues post on Dreamhost Status.com.
Of course, they’ll be refunding Mari’s credit card for that erroneous charge as promised in the above linked post, but this is making Mari worry. Mari will have to call her credit card company the day after she gets the “all clear” email, just to make sure that everything is as it should be. Mari got a call from them last week about something, but was eating, so Mari’s mum just told them she wasn’t here. However, now that this happened, Mari is really worried. Did Mari’s check get there late? The mail has been three weeks late since mid-December due to all the Christmas backup stuff the USPS has had4, and since Mari’s credit card company sucks, they have no pay online option (or Mari would have used that).
Mari could be really screwed financially, and have bad credit because of this if Dreamhost doesn’t help to clear everything up.
This Isn’t The First Time
…and probably won’t be the last. Dreamhost has had at least 3 major outages that Mari has been affected by, at least two of which Mari tweeted about. First dreamhoststatus.com post linked to in a tweet, second post linked to in a tweet.
Mari really does want to switch, but…
Mari has been looking at Holdfire.net hosting for a while. Mari decided in June of last year that if Dreamhost screws up 5 times, Mari will switch. Dreamhost has two strikes left before Mari switches. The problem being that Mari is too poor to switch hosts at the moment. Even though Holdfire is cheap, and Mari could host her two blogs (Mt and Mari’s personal blog) with no problem ($1.50 a month for a bloggers package!), Mari would run into problems when Mari had to consider her hosting (moving 30 people would be such a pain, plus Mari would have to decide whether or not to host anymore at that point), plus the fact that Mari owns 4 domains and has another 3 registered with Dreamhost. What Mari has right now and offers for hosting, Mari would have to pay $40 up front for with Holdfire, and Mari actually doesn’t have that much available to spend on webhosting at the moment. Add to that the fact that Mari isn’t on a cPanel, the migration process would be an astronomical pain in the butt.
[UPDATE] A few hours later everything seems calm on the Dreamhost side of things, but Mari will have to call her credit card company later in the week to make sure the balance is correct, and that she didn’t get charged any ridiculous overage fees or anything. Knowing Mari’s credit card company, probably DID happen, even though the total amount Mari was charged was only $20 of the $240, probably because Mari’s too close to going over her limit and 20 was all that could be charged to her account…eheh…
1 Bonus points for whoever gets that medical term!
2 Account number edited out.
3 Mari can’t actually access the Dreamhost Web Panel to check at the moment, because it’s down!
4 It’s not just the USPS either! FedEx has been really late too. A textbook that Mari needs for class was ordered on 3 January and has still not gotten here, and it’s 15 January! Mari doesn’t know whether it’s the school that’s the problem or the shipping, but since a CD Mari ordered on the 18th of December got here on the 4th of January, Mari has to assume that it’s the shipping.
Online, Rants 
15 January 2008, 19:44
dreamhost, dreamhost billing screwup, dreamhost overbilled me, dreamhost problems, dreamhost screwup, holdfire, holdfire hosting, holdfire network, hosting problems, web hostingYou can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hopefully your credit card gets resolved soon!
Leave Dreamhost! And come over to Holdfire! Moving 30 people isn’t that bad, is it? I mean, it might be a little tricky because I don’t think Jordan covers a Dreamhost to cPanel move, but I figure it wouldn’t be too much trouble. Then again, I’ve never seen a Dreamhost admin panel, so who knows what I’m talking about? Lol.
But seriously. Leave. I’ve never really liked big hosts like Dreamhost, HostGator, etc; I like a small company because I feel as if I can get a much more personal feel. Just use my affiliate link! Or at least put me in the nice “How’d you get here” box.
Wow, that’s one major billing mistake. That could cost them you as a client.
Well, if you did get an over limit charge, Dreamhost did vow to pay those too. Hopefully you won’t have to worry about moving.
don’t know the medical term..but have heard it on House I believe.
Anyways. that is a bunch of crap! I’m actually looking for a host…and was thinking about using the same one you use…but now I might not. Don’t worrie, I’m not leaving you…it’s for something totaly different.
I hope things are ok with your credit card though. And hopefully this dosn’t happen again. And if it does…and dreamhost gets 2 more strikes…hopefully you have the money to switch. <3
Ouch, that’s a major mistake. If that ever happened to me and my parents found out, my friends can read my notice of death in the newspaper.
Offtopic to the post: Have you seen Alex’s site (the animosity one)? It’s sort of disturbing…
@Phoebe
THANK you for the heads up on Alex’s site. *suspended*
Lmao, cursing is okay with me now, but that’s just stupid. He could have at least made it entertaining.
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